Friday, February 12, 2016

Just before Baldwin Avenue
makes its ignoble end at the T-shaped intersection with Hana Highway, you can
check out the latest building coming up in the middle of Paia town. It's right
next to the old Mercantile building that now houses Milagros restaurant. (I
remember when it used to be an ice cream parlor and video game arcade called
Ice Creams and Dreams.)

The building looks like it's
going to provide more commercial space in a town where space is a hot
commodity. I have little doubt that the newest stores in Paia will cater to the
new money and folks who walk its streets.

These days you can find
everything you need in Paia to fit your fancy-free and bourgeois lifestyle:
tofu and turmeric vitamins from Mana Foods, a tattoo from the Paia Tattoo
Parlor, high-end swim trunks from Imrie and organic pizza from Flatbread and
locally brewed beers at Cafe Mambo. One thing that's a little harder to find is
open space.

That little patch of land
next to Milagros used to be a green square right in the heart of Paia town.
When I was in high school, the town was really different. There was no traffic
jam going all the way to Spreckelsville. There was less stuff to buy in Paia,
too.

But those bygone days were no
paradise. It was a little rougher back then too. Teenagers hung around Paia Bay
to pick fights and break into cars. At night the dirt lot behind Charley's
would oftentimes turn into a makeshift boxing ring for drunken hooligans.

Then there were the hippies.
Sure, they aren't anything new to the north shore. The first wave came in the
1960s shortly after statehood. They camped and congregated far away from towns
like Wailuku and Lahaina and far from sleepy plantation towns like Paia. They
lived out in the boonies of Huelo, Haiku and Peahi. Some preferred the scorpions
and sands of Makena.

By the time the late 20th
century rolled around, Maui for the most part made peace with her hippies. Gone
were the days of police officers and local boys roughing up longhairs for no
real reason. Sure, the crackdown on drum circles at Little Beach happens now
and again, but with much less frequency as the bygone and wild days of the
1970s and '80s.

It seemed that as the first
wave hippies got a little older and wiser, as they started to enroll their kids
in public schools or at private institutions, they too settled into the fabric
of our island community. They found a place on island right along the
descendants of plantation workers and conservative, condo-living retirees on
the south shore.

Then Jerry Garcia died.

The cornerstone of the jam
band of all jam bands, the Grateful Dead, died of a heart attack eight days
after his 53rd birthday in 1995. That summer, thousands gathered in San
Francisco, his hometown. The park and the house where the Dead used to live on
Haight Street was covered in flowers and memorabilia. A year later, band mates
spread some of his ashes on the banks of the Ganges River in India following a
lunar eclipse.

The hordes of the young,
impressionable and unwashed, who normally follow the band all over the globe,
had nowhere to go.

I'm still not sure how or why
Paia, Maui, Hawaii became the beacon for the Deadheads. Nonetheless, the '90s
saw an influx of young star children. They all started hanging out in the
grassy spot off of Baldwin Avenue next to Milagros. I remember seeing these
star children assembled in tightly packed drum circles, playing hacky sack or
sometimes just begging for change.

A few Milagros workers
remember that the lowest part of the grassy lot formed near their building. It
would often turn into a puddle with mud and a deceptive layer of grass floating
on top. The puddle was formidable and would easily become knee deep after a
good rain. Those in the know would avoid that spot, but the unwary would often
step in it and get their slippers stuck in the mud. Milagros employees quickly
christened this corner of the makeshift park the "hippie trap."

Paia eventually weathered the
newest wave of hippies. The crowd disbanded. Many moved on, and a few stayed
behind like always. Rumblings from the dark, gravel part of the Charley's
parking lot are a thing of the past.

The gravel lot has been
replaced with the paved and odious paid parking lot, where several folks refuse
to park out of principle. And the grassy lot? It's a thing of the past.

The hippie trap is being
replaced with a tourist trap. And they'll make off with much more than a pair
of grubby slippers.

Monday, February 1, 2016

While most sports have their all-star game
halfway through the season, it's different for football. We wait until all but
two teams are left to play in the main event, the Super Bowl, and then have the
honorary game played when the season is over for everyone else.

Yes, the Pro Bowl is upon us this weekend.
It's going to be played at Aloha Stadium - a venue that has hosted it more than
any other place since its inception in 1951 - this Sunday. And like Pro Bowls
past, a weeklong extravaganza in Waikiki will attract tourists, reporters and
onlookers ready to spend money in our state. We hosted the event for 30
straight seasons from 1980 to 2009. After a brief stint on the Mainland, it
came back in 2011 and hasn't left.

Our state, like the rest of the country, loves
football. But unlike Kansas City, where everyone on your block, at your school
or job roots for the Chiefs, or in an entire region like New England that
collectively worships Tom Brady, you never know who is a fan of which team. In
the islands, you can pick just about whatever team you want. The fan diversity
is played out in living rooms, backyards and sports bars across the state.

I remember when I was a little boy everyone
was a San Francisco 49ers fan partly because of Hawaii's own Jesse Sapolu and
later because of the engrossing combination of Joe Montana and Jerry Rice. Then
there were the years where everyone suddenly became a Cowboys fan. Then the
Steelers. And now it seems like we have an abundance of Seahawks fans.

Maybe that's why Hawaii is a nice place to
host a game where you'll get 30 teams represented in a single game. The weather
and beaches don't hurt either.

Much has changed about the Pro Bowl. The teams
are no longer divided by conference. Hall-of-Famers Rice and Michael Irvin get
to play real-life fantasy football and pick a team out of players who were
selected by the fans.

There are new rules to it too. There will be
no kickoff and a coin toss determines possession - each quarter. The game
starts at the 25-yard line. The NFL even narrowed the uprights, making it
harder to kick field goals and extra points. All of this, according to the NFL,
is designed to make the game more exciting.

But all is not well in the world of football.
This year the number of players who were selected is at an all-time low.
Perhaps it's the all the strange and scary news about injuries and concussions.
Perhaps it's because it's not a very good game. Or is it something else?

Let's go back to the 49ers. Steve Young was
one of game's greatest players when I was a teenager. 'Niners fans hoped that
he would lead the team back to the dominance it enjoyed in the 1980s. Then one
day in September during the playoffs, Aeneas Williams of the Arizona Cardinals
ran through the offensive line and tackled him to the ground.

Young didn't get up. The camera zoomed into
his face. His eyes were closed and he looked almost peaceful like he was
asleep. When he eventually got up and walked off the field, the crowd cheered.
He never played football again. That was more than 16 years ago.

Players are faster, stronger and bigger.
They're hitting harder and faster. This year, another 49er, linebacker Chris
Borland, retired from the sport. He's 24 years old and his health and game are
not declining. He gets paid millions. So why retire?

It was the risk of permanent brain injury. In
the interviews that followed, Borland described the game he loves as "a
spectacle of violence, for entertainment, and you're the actors in it. You're
complicit in that." He's done. He won't even coach kids.

There is a growing body of research and
evidence suggesting that repeated head trauma and concussions may cause
debilitating and permanent brain injury. Former NFL players have sued the
league and the litigation is tied up in federal courts across the country.

Even the NCAA has had to deal with similar
lawsuits. One of the plaintiffs is former football player Adrian Arrington, who
suffered a concussion so severe that he could not recognize his parents.
Although the details remain unclear, it appears the NCAA is going to settle
with the athletes. The terms will probably include a research fund devoted to
studying whether head trauma causes brain disease.

And so while we watch our high school, college
and professional footballers strap on helmets and pads, the body of research
will continue to grow. So will the debate. But I doubt it will put a damper the
festivities in Waikiki and Halawa this Sunday.